The Supreme Court reviewed the appellate courtâs decision against Plaintiffs Jack and Danette Steele. In their claim, Plaintiffs alleged that attorney Katherine Allen gave them incorrect information about a statute of limitations, which led to missing a filing deadline in a negligence suit. The trial court dismissed both their claims of negligent misrepresentation and professional negligence. Plaintiffs only appealed the dismissal of their negligent misrepresentation claim. The appellate court held that Plaintiffs had a claim against the attorney. However, the Supreme Court disagreed, finding that Plaintiffsâ evidence was not sufficient to support their claim. The Court reversed the decision of the appellate court and remanded the case for further proceedings.

At trial, a jury found that Defendant Holly Pippin was not negligent in causing an accident in which her car hit that of the Plaintiff, Cheryl Kendrick. The main issue at trial was whether the driving conditions on the day of the accident were âexpected.â Driving conditions were icy, and Ms. Pippin testified that she knew it had been raining the night before to cause potentially icy roads the next morning. Ms. Kendrick challenged Ms. Pippinâs argument that the icy roads were âunexpected,â therefore her attempt to avoid hitting Ms. Kendrickâs car was actually just negligent driving. Ms. Kendrick appealed to the Court of Appeals, claiming the trial court made three mistakes: (1) the court should have instructed the jury to consider a âsudden emergency;â (2) that it should not have instructed the jury on âres ipsa loquitur;â and (3) there should have been a new trial because of alleged juror misconduct. The Supreme Court reviewed the lower courts' decisions, and agreed with the appellate court on two of the three issues presented. The Court held that Ms. Pippin failed to present evidence that she was confronted with a âsudden emergencyâ from the road conditions. The Court agreed with the appellate court's dismissal of the jury instruction on res ipsa loquitur. The Court did not find the allegation of juror misconduct credible. The Court therefore reversed the appellate courtâs decision and remanded the case for a new trial.

Early in the morning on October, 2009, Pueblo police received a 9-1-1 call from an unidentified caller who asked for assistance on â2143 East Thirteenth Street.â When officers arrived, they discovered there was no such address. Looking for the source of the 9-1-1 call, officers began contacting other addresses on the street. Respondent Frank Glickâs home was one of the addresses the officers checked. The officers asked if they could come inside and speak with the other occupants in the home to make sure they were safe. Respondent said the officers could speak with the other occupants, but he asked the officers to remain outside. When respondent went to find his girlfriend, he left the front door wide open. No lights were on. Without crossing the threshold, officers used flashlights to peer inside the home. They saw drug paraphernalia on a small table. When the girlfriend arrived at the door, officers noticed Respondent near the table with the suspected drugs. They entered the house believing Respondent was trying to destroy the paraphernalia on the tabletop. Officers arrested Respondent. At the hearing, Respondent disputed whether the officers conducted an illegal search of his home by using their flashlights while standing at the threshold to see inside. The trial court found the officers conducted an illegal search, and ordered evidence of the drugs suppressed. The Supreme Court reversed the lower court, holding that the arresting officers did not conduct an illegal search of Respondentâs home when they used their flashlights to observe evidence plainly visible inside Respondentâs home.

The trial court ruling at issue in this case arises out of post-conviction proceedings following the imposition of the death sentence for Robert Ray. Ray was convicted of first degree murder for killing Javad Marshall-Fields, a key prosecution witness, and his fiancée Vivian Wolfe. Leading up to Rayâs trial, his counsel provided him with discovery from which Ray and a co-defendant figured out who the key prosecution witnesses were. On several occasions, Ray tried to arrange to have those witnesses killed. Ray, through associates, made a number of threats against Marshall-Fields and even offered him money not to testify. Marshall-Fields would later die from a âdrive-byâ shooting by one of Rayâs associates. The prosecution placed a large number of witnesses into witness protection. For those witnesses who did not want protection, the prosecution promised to keep their addresses from defense counsel and the defendant to secure their cooperation at trial. The trial court issued protective orders, and set up a procedure where defense counsel could call witnesses from the prosecutionâs office without learning their phone numbers, if the witnesses were willing to be interviewed. A jury convicted Ray of murder and returned a death sentence. Ray appealed the conviction and sentence, arguing the protective order and witness interview procedure violated his constitutional rights to confront witnesses against him. Recognizing that a trial court must balance between the defendantâs right to discovery of key witnesses and the extraordinary threat to witness safety posed by defendantâs murder of another witness, the Supreme Court found that defendantâs rights were not violated in light of the circumstances of the case. The Court held that the trial court abused its discretion when it lifted the protective order and required the prosecution to disclose the addresses of the protected witnesses. The court reversed the trial courtâs disclosure order.

South Fork Water and Sanitation District (District) petitioned for a declaratory judgment to prevent the Town of South Fork (Town) from acquiring water rights and water systems to serve its residents. A significant portion of the Town overlaps the Districtâs boundaries. Between 2001 and 2003, the District began to develop a utility plan that included construction of a centralized water system. The District took preliminary steps toward the provision of water service, but failed to secure the necessary funding to build the centralized water system. With no money, the District could not purchase existing water systems in the area. The Town is authorized under its charter to provide water service to its residents, and began preparations to do so in 2006. The District filed a declaratory judgment complaint against the Town alleging the Town was furnishing water services within the Districtâs boundaries without approval. The Supreme Court found that because the District did not provide water to the Town, and could not demonstrate that it could, the District could not withhold approval to the Town to provide water service. The Court affirmed the appellate courtâs decision.